The Story of a Life

29

Wasting Time

To this day I am suspicious of people with round, black eyes. My pupil Marusya Kazanskaya had eyes like that. They looked like little olives.

Her eyes stared blankly upon the world and only came alive with curiosity when some dashing cadet or student from the lycée in his coat with a beaver collar passed by her window. The mere sight of such a fine young man was enough for the knowledge Marusya had worked so hard to learn – dates, geography, the rules of syntax – to immediately fly out of her head. I had been hired to tutor Marusya, a twittering girl with a pointy nose and beady eyes. Suboch found me the job. ‘They’re a very respectable family,’ he had told me, ‘but I’ll warn you the girl is no genius.’

The very respectable family consisted of Marusya, her father – a retired general – and her skinny French mother. The general was no bigger than a dwarf. He was so short in fact he couldn’t reach the hook to hang up his own coat. He did, however, boast a luxuriant beard. The general was an extremely clean and tidy man with puffy hands and watery eyes that flashed with anger when he recalled his enemies – all those generals who had been promoted ahead of him, men such as Sukhomlinov, Dragomirov, Kuropatkin and Rennenkampf.fn1 Kazansky had retired with the rank of adjutant general after commanding a number of military districts and giving lessons in strategy to the heir to the throne. ‘As for military strategy,’ Kazansky would say of his pupil, the future Nicholas II, ‘that young man was a complete dunderhead.’ He considered Alexander III to have been the last true tsar.

Kazansky had a large library of books on warfare, but I never once saw him remove a single one of them from behind the locked shelves. Rather, he spent his days reading the New Times or playing patience. Curled up on his lap lay a small Pomeranian with little black eyes just like Marusya’s. The dog was mean and stupid.

After every lesson Kazansky would accompany me as far as the Galitsky Market. He loved these daily walks and came alive as soon as we left the house. He would laugh and joke and tell me stories of army life. He liked to poke his walking stick into the stomachs of the soldiers and cadets who stopped to salute him, saying: ‘I’m tired of this sort of thing, soldier! You’ve all got fat. Suck in that belly of yours!’

Madame Kazanskaya and her husband had ridiculous pet names for each other. I have met many boring people, but no one as boring as her. Blinking away tears from her wet, lap-dog eyes, she spent her days sewing pinafores for Marusya or painting purple irises on pink satin ribbons. She gave the ribbons as birthday presents to her acquaintances. No one knew what they were for. They had no discernible use. Some people hung them on the wall or laid them out on drawing room tables. Others tried to use them as bookmarks, but they were too big and wide and didn’t fit somehow. The more discriminating of her acquaintances stuffed them somewhere out of sight. But Madame Kazanskaya just kept on painting these ribbons with idiotic persistence and giving them to the same people, over and over. Ribbons filled their flat. They were everywhere and you couldn’t avoid them no matter what. It was enough to drive one mad.

The Kazanskys’ flat had high ceilings and tall windows, but the light inside seemed cold and grey. The sun’s rays somehow lost their warmth and sparkle as they passed through the glass and just lay on the floors like faded sheets of paper.

At first I could not make sense of the Kazanskys’ view of life. They believed in God, and they believed that this God had constructed the world in such a way that it would benefit the Kazanskys. God, in their understanding, was some sort of tsarist governor general, albeit on a much larger scale, of course. He kept order in the universe and looked after respectable families. Along with God, the Kazanskys had another divinity, Marusya, and they showered her with the morbid love of parents who have children late in life. Her whims were not just charming; they were sacred. At the mere sight of her pouting lower lip, the general immediately removed his spurs and tiptoed about the flat, sighing, and her mama quaked and rushed off to the kitchen to prepare Marusya’s favourite meringue treats.

The old couple’s main topic of conversation was arranging Marusya’s marriage. The search for a husband was done carefully, step by step, and with time grew into an obsession. Madame Kazanskaya’s memory became a thick, heavy ledger in which the name, and worth, of every eligible bachelor in Kiev and the entire south-western territory of the Russian Empire was recorded.

Marusya attended Madame Duchinskaya’s private gymnasium. The school was not attended by the daughters of noblemen, but social hierarchy was still paramount, and marks were given according to the wealth and social standing of each girl’s parents. Marusya, however, was so stupid that even Papa Kazansky’s high rank could not save her from receiving the lowest marks. Every time she was called to the blackboard, she just stood there sullenly, pressing her lips together and picking at the trim of her black pinafore.

Each failing mark caused a commotion in the general’s household. Marusya locked herself in her room and declared a hunger strike. Madame Kazanskaya was convulsed with sobs. The general ran from one end of the flat to the other, screaming that he was going to go and see the governor the very next day and insist that this ‘Jewish nest’ of a school be shut down.

The following morning the general donned his parade uniform and all his medals and left to have it out with the school’s headmistress, Madame Duchinskaya, a majestic lady who understood well the position and power of her pupils’ parents. In the end, Marusya was given the lowest passing mark. Duchinskaya did not want to lose the daughter of a such an exalted family, for this might cast a shadow on her irreproachable institution. With this, the Kazansky family calmed down, until the next failed examination.

After my first session with Marusya I became convinced that trying to explain things to her was utterly pointless. She couldn’t understand a thing. And so, I opted for a risky approach. I made her memorise her textbooks. This she somehow managed. She learned page after page by heart just as children memorise counting rhymes like ‘Ten fat sausages, sizzling in a pan, one went pop and the other went bang! Eight fat sausages …’ I could have used the same method to teach history, geography and Russian to a parrot. It was hellish work. I found it exhausting. But soon I was rewarded for my efforts: Marusya brought home a passing mark in one of her examinations.

That evening when I rang the bell to the Kazanskys’ flat, the general himself opened the door. He had a spring in his step and was rubbing his hands. Around his neck hung the Order of St Vladimir. He helped me off with my old school coat. Marusya, in a new dress, her hair done up with enormous bows, was waltzing with a chair for a partner in the drawing room. She was accompanied by Mademoiselle Martin, her French instructor, on the piano. The Pomeranian ran from room to room, barking incessantly. The door to the dining room flew open and out walked Madame Kazanskaya wearing a dress with a long train. I could see behind her back that the table had been laid for an elaborate celebration. An exquisite dinner had been planned to acknowledge the occasion of Marusya’s first decent mark.

At the end of the meal, the general nonchalantly popped the cork on a bottle of champagne. Madame Kazanskaya kept a close watch to make certain he didn’t spill any on the tablecloth. The general began gulping the champagne as if it were water. In an instant, his face turned red. He started flapping his arms wildly. His shiny round cufflinks came loose and went flying across the room.

‘Yes, sir!’ the general said, shaking his head despondently. ‘Every man has his cross to bear in this hell of life. And carry it we do! Life’s no bed of roses for us. Women, my dear fellow, simply don’t understand us. They’ve got the brains of a chicken.’

‘My little dove,’ said a frightened Madame Kazanskaya, ‘I don’t understand a word you’re saying.’

‘To hell with it!’ the general said with conviction. ‘Let me say it again: To hell with it! Let’s drink, my friend. As our great poet said: “Oh, what a lot, Creator, to be the father of a grown-up daughter!”’fn2

‘My little dove, how can you!’ cried Madame Kazanskaya, causing the little bluish bags under her eyes to tremble.

‘Oh, my sweet muffin,’ said the general in a sugary yet threatening voice. ‘You would be wise to remember that I am an Adjutant General in the Imperial Russian Army.’ He slammed a fist on the table and bellowed, his voice cracking: ‘Listen when I’m talking to you! I have had the honour of giving instruction to His Imperial Majesty the Tsar and I don’t care to hear any comments from mindless fools like you! Attention!’

After this outburst, he calmed down a bit, and then leapt from his chair, grabbed a napkin, tapped with his heels, and started dancing about the room. This didn’t last long before he collapsed into an armchair and had to be revived with spirits of valerian. He sat there moaning, his little legs twitching.

Mademoiselle Martin and I left the party together. The street lamps were barely visible. It was a foggy March evening.

‘Oh, I’m exhausted!’ said Mademoiselle Martin. ‘I can’t teach that stupid girl any longer or even go back to that house of fools. I refuse.’

I was envious of her. She could choose not to give lessons to Marusya while I couldn’t: the Kazanskys were paying me thirty roubles a month. This was an unheard-of sum for a tutor. It was at this time that Father unexpectedly quit his job at the Bryansk factory and left Bezhitsa for my grandfather’s home at Gorodishche. He could help me no more. I lied to Mama. I wrote to her that I was earning fifty roubles a month and didn’t need any help. Not that she had anything to give me.

Mademoiselle Martin and I parted at the corner of Bezakovskaya Street. It was snowing heavily. An incandescent light buzzed over the entrance of a chemist’s shop. She walked off in the direction of Bibikovsky Boulevard, making swift, gliding steps over the slippery pavement as if she were on roller skates. Her head was lowered, and she was shielding her face from the snow with her muff.

I stood and watched her go. I felt strange after the champagne. I had moments when my head felt foggy and it seemed to me as if I were on the verge of some miraculous new beginning, but just as quickly the fog would clear and I understood with complete clarity that nothing had changed. Tomorrow, just like today, I would walk these same streets so well known to me now and would pass by the same old front gardens, droshky drivers, advertisements and policemen, and would make my way to the home of the Kazanskys. I would climb the yellow-tiled stairs, would ring at the doors painted to look like oak, would hear the Pomeranian begin to bark, and would then be allowed back into the now-familiar entryway with its mirror and coat stand, upon which I would see hanging on its usual hook the general’s greatcoat with its red lapels and all its buttons done up from top to bottom.

Then that same fog came back, and I thought of the kinship among lonely people like Mademoiselle Martin, Fitsovsky and myself. It seemed to me that we ought to be friends and help each other get through life. But what made me think Mademoiselle Martin was lonely? I didn’t even know her. I had heard she was from Grenoble and could see that she had dark and slightly sullen eyes, but that was all.

I stood there on the corner for a while and then went to see Fitsovsky. He wasn’t at home. I found the key in its usual hiding place and opened the door.

The room was cold. I lit the lamp, kindled the fire in the iron stove, picked up a book of poetry from the table, lay down on the oilskin sofa and covered myself with my coat. I opened the book, and once again that same fog rolled over me. ‘The autumn days descend in slow succession,’fn3 I read. A warm light appeared between the lines on the page. It began to grow and spread, and I could feel its heat on my face.

A yellow leaf twists slowly to the ground,

The air is marvellously pure, and transparent the freshness of the day,

Yet my soul cannot escape its invisible decay.

I put the book aside. I lay there thinking about the future before me that would be filled with many remarkable moments, some happy, some sad. The future was like this night, with the soft gleam of the snowdrifts, the silence of the gardens, the glow of the street lamps. The night hid in its darkness those good people who would one day become dear to me and that gentle dawn that was destined to break over the earth. The night hid all the mysteries, all the encounters, all the joys of the life to come, and I found it wonderful.

No, we young people were not unhappy. We believed and we loved. We did not bury our talent in the ground. Our souls were not in danger of ‘invisible decay’. No. We were ready to struggle to the death for our wonderful future. That is what I thought as I lay on that oilskin sofa. To hell with all those loathsome Kazanskys and their kind, to hell with that whole anthill of cruel respectability.

When I returned home to Diky Lane from Fitsovsky’s, Pani Kozlovskaya handed me a telegram. It said that my father was dying on the farm at Gorodishche. The next morning, I left Kiev for Belaya Tserkov. My father’s death broke a thread binding me to my family. It was the first one. Soon the remaining threads began to break as well.